Author: Rob Mielcarski

I have read many books on astronomy and physics. Here are a few of the important ideas that stuck with me:

We have deduced mathematical laws of physics that accurately describe and predict the universe’s behavior.

Some of the laws of physics, such as quantum mechanics, are very strange but they work remarkably well.

The universe began about 13.8 billion years ago as a big bang of extremely dense energy.

A few constants define how the universe evolved after the big bang. It seems these constants could have been different resulting in a completely different universe. We do not know why they are the way they are.

We do not and probably never will know what existed before the big bang, nor whether our universe is unique or one of many, nor whether our universe is infinite or finite.

As the big bang expanded and cooled some of the energy converted into light gases.

These gases formed clouds which collapsed under gravity to form stars.

As these stars aged some exploded and created heavier elements like carbon and other materials necessary for life.

Some of these heavier elements collapsed into new stars and planets including our sun and earth about 4.5 billion years ago. All life is thus amazingly composed of exploded star-dust.

There are a mind-boggling 300 sextillion (3×1023) stars in the universe and probably more planets.

Shortly after our earth formed it was randomly struck by a mars sized body which created our moon.

The moon helped to create an environment hospitable for life by stabilizing earth’s rotation and creating tides.

Our sun will use up its fuel and consume the earth in about 6 billion years.

The universe’s expansion is accelerating and we do not know what the “dark energy” is that is causing this.

We calculate more gravity than should exist for the mass we observe and we do not know what this “dark matter” is.

95% of the universe is dark energy and dark matter (the stuff we do not yet understand).

The universe began as high quality dense energy and most scientists think it will end in about 100 trillion years as low quality diffuse energy – cold, black, and without life.

The amount we understand about the universe is quite remarkable and is something to be genuinely proudof as a member of the human species.

We have found no need for a god to explain anything in the universe, unless we want to assign a reason for the laws of physics being the way they are, in which case such a god would have no resemblance to any of the gods worshiped by our many religions.

I find it enlightening to contemplate the purpose or objective of the universe.

Since the universe started as high quality dense energy and its destination is low quality diffuse energy it is reasonable to state that the objective of the universe is to degrade energy.

Structures and mechanisms which degrade energy can and will form provided they are consistent with the laws of physics. Those structures and mechanisms which degrade energy the most effectively are the most likely to exist.

Another way to think about this is that wherever an energy gradient exists, things (work) can happen, and given enough time they will happen, provided the laws of physics permit it.

This is important because life is an excellent mechanism for degrading energy. Life is thus probable everywhere in the universe that has conditions that permit it to exist.

Humans are the Earth’s most effective species at degrading energy. We dominate the planet because of this talent, and although in the process we are causing the extinction of many other species and probably causing our own collapse, it is interesting to observe that humans are doing what the universe wants. That is, burning all of the fossil energy as quickly as possible to convert it into low quality waste heat thus helping the universe to arrive at its destination as quickly as possible.

If humans had not learned to exploit fossil energy then some other species would probably have evolved to exploit this energy gradient.

It is probable that intelligent life has evolved many (but not too many) times in the universe but always collapses shortly after it learns how to exploit fossil energy. This may explain why we have not heard from any other intelligent life despite years of listening.

This interactive tool titled The Scale of the Universe 2 by Cary Huang is excellent for helping to visualize our place in the universe:

The economy is a very popular topic. Everyone wants more money. Everyone has a strong opinion. Lots of intriguing and murky stuff goes on. Many bloggers make a living from analyzing, predicting, muckraking, and titillating.

Many different sites cater to different perspectives. Do you want to blame the fed, or the rich, or the slackers, or the foreigners, or the right-wing, or the left-wing? Take your pick, you can find a big community of like-minded people to froth with.

Had lunch today with a successful small-scale farmer specializing in producing healthy meat.

He seemed oblivious to problems we face. He said peak oil had been proven wrong and that the new fracking technologies were going to make the US an energy exporter. He seemed an intelligent person, yet believed strongly in something for which he had no supporting data and chose not to ask me any questions about why I held a different view.

Nate Hagens was right. The data have proven peak oil a reality yet the public still views peak oil with hostile distaste and willful ignorance. I think Varki’s theory explains the willful ignorance.

I would estimate the number of people who understand what is going on is less than 1 in 10,000. What will happen when the economy collapses? Almost everyone will be surprised and unprepared. The chorus will be “no one saw this coming”.

This is my favorite talk on limits to growth, the most important topic almost no one discusses, including people who should know better, like the Green Party.

Note that Murphy does not mention the explosive worldwide growth in debt, which is the only reason the game has continued longer than engineers like myself predicted it should.

The problem with our reliance on debt is that when the correction comes, it will be much more violent and damaging than it needed to be, which is another topic that the Green Party, and almost everyone else, does not discuss.

In summary, the most important things we should be discussing, are the things we never discuss.

Currently Reading

Favorite Quotes

For explaining why humans are odd
To Varki and Brower we applaud
A great mystery they solved
With denial we evolved
And created the Higgs, overshoot, and God

Denial not only makes us believe in god, it is god, because denial created us, and denial may destroy us.

The human brain, the God it believes in, and the overshoot it enabled and denies, all resulted from the same improbable genetic adaptation that occurred about 100,000 years ago.

Denial is the reality that must be most aggressively denied to avoid collapsing the house of cards that keeps us functioning.

The most amazing thing about human overshoot is that we do not discuss it.

You know you are in trouble when reduced CO2 emissions from an economic collapse caused by low-cost oil depletion is not sufficient to prevent civilization collapse from climate change caused by previously emitted CO2.

Our only choices are do we want to fall from a higher elevation later, or climb down from a lower elevation sooner?

Things that can’t continue usually stop too late.

Truth is like poetry and most people hate poetry.

All 8 billion of us owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact it rains; 6 billion of us also owe our existence to nitrogen fertilizer created from natural gas by Haber-Bosch factories.

While it digs its own grave, all the mind can do is entertain fantasies and create excuses.

When the only paying job in town is sawing off the branch which you are sitting on, you….saw away! You might refuse to saw and hang yourself from that branch, but the end is the same anyway, and that option is much less fun. (Cynic @Megacancer)

It is remarkable that a brain emerged from a cloud of hydrogen and figured out the laws of physics that governed, and possibly made inevitable, its own creation and destruction.

We have met the oblivious and they are us.

All 8 billion of us originated from one small tribe in Africa about 100,000 years ago that gave birth to a child with an improbable mutation for a more powerful brain that denied reality. The other tribes were soon toast and we took over the planet. We’re all close cousins. I love you all. Except the deniers.

Meaning comes from understanding why we can understand there is no meaning.

Way too many smart people with big reputations are wrong about everything that matters. Something’s gonna happen that gives them an excuse not to have to admit they were in denial.

One of the most, if not the most, precious and rare things in the universe is the human brain. We have a cosmic obligation to use it and to confirm it works.

Fire to cooking to intelligence to denial to god to plotting to capital punishment to self-domestication to Apollo 11 to 7 billion too many.